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[ecrea] Feminist Media Studies Special Issue on Gendered Ageing Bodies in Popular Media Culture: Call for Papers

Tue Apr 26 11:04:58 GMT 2016



Feminist Media Studies Special Issue on Gendered Ageing Bodies in Popular Media Culture: Call for Papers
Deadline: 15 May 2016
Edited by Iolanda Tortajada, Frederik Dhaenens, Cilia Willem

http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/ah/rfms-gendered-ageing-bodies-popular-media-culture/?post_id=10207780320178106_10207780325338235#_=_

This special issue of Feminist Media Studies will explore the interconnections between gender, ageing bodies and popular (media) culture in global societies. How is ageing addressed by cultural expres-sions world-wide in terms of gender displays and heteronormative frames? What kind of consumer-ist imperatives are circulated across the globe, and what are the particularities that distinguish communities and cultures?

Although in some contexts age is more positively viewed, and for example elderly women are revered, the dominant imperative is to ‘stay young’ as long as possible. When looking young becomes a model of success, both age denial and the shame of ageing emerge as widespread responses.

An inevitable attitude of resistance to ageing ends up pervading the way age is generally conceived of. Therefore, however paradoxically, the ageing process is turned on its head and becomes an anti-ageing consumerist enterprise that is but an attempt to slow down or even reverse ageing. Embodiments of the ‘successful’ ageing model show up in many western media representations of ageing (see, among others, Soden, 2012; Ylänne, 2012; Dolan, 2014; Whelehan and Gwynne, 2014). Mature bodies are only interesting to media and popular culture insofar as they can potentially be used as visible proof of a deferred ageing process; otherwise, they remain hidden from the public eye, as they are considered to be abject bodies that do not fit the aforementioned model of successful ageing.

It is the global circulation of the neoliberal consumerist ethos that ultimately drives the representa-tion and performance of ageing. An important question, then, is what role gender plays in the interaction between cultural contexts, age and mediated cultures. Age and gender structure each other in a complex back-and-forth feedback exchange: the body becomes a site of struggle, a battlefield of sorts, where ageism and heteronormativity shape ageing experiences (Halberstam, 2005; Slevin, 2006). The female body is the one enduring the most opprobrium in that regard: "[t]he youthful structure of the look […] exhorts women to pass for younger once they are a certain age" (Woodward, 2006, p. 162).

However, it is not just about media representation: media create the philosophic and social parameters of ageing itself. A key question is how this subject helps us understand and theorize media in a consumerist neoliberal and global environment.

Ageing and ageism are important issues for feminism; however, feminist theorists have only recently begun to take them up. This special issue, Gendered ageing bodies in popular media culture, should provide us with an excellent opportunity to go into all these topics in greater depth.

Possible topics in relation to this theme may include (but are not limited to):

_Female and male ageing bodies in global popular media culture (magazines, pop music, TV, film, blogs…)

_Divas’ and stars’ ageing bodies

_Ageing in factual media (journalism, news and documentary production)

_Technologies of ageing

_Mediated ideologies of life span

_Sexuality, Reproduction and Ageing

_Overcoming ageist representational strategies

_Aesthetics of the ageing body

_Reception of discourses regarding ageing

Aims & Scope
Feminist Media Studies provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new media technologies. The journal invites contributions from feminist researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual perspectives.

Peer Review Policy
All research articles in this journal undergo rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by at least two scholars.

Submission Instructions
Please submit a 350-word abstract as well as a short (1-page) CV to Iolanda Tortajada ((iolanda.tortajada /at/ urv.cat)) by 15 May 2016. Authors whose abstracts are selected will be notified by 1 August, 2016 and asked to submit complete manuscripts by 15 January, 2017. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication of the paper, which will be subject to peer review.




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